Top Five Ways Price Analytics Helps Optimize Your Bottom Line

SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwire – August 31, 2010) – In the current economy, businesses are looking across their enterprises and using a variety of technology and analytics to increase profits. One such technology, price optimization, is gaining favor for its ability to help companies positively impact revenue.

As more and more products are sold via the Internet, particularly in the areas of travel and consumer products, the ability to quickly assess price points and SKUs and react with a competitive price is increasingly important. Lixto, a provider of competitive price Intelligence solutions, shares five recommendations for utilizing price analytics.

1. Recognize the Drivers for Change.
Globalization, along with the rise of online shopping and the proliferation of product lines and distribution channels, has led the consumer products marketplace to become increasingly volatile. This plethora of outlets and products has increased the need for a consolidated market view of price offerings so that organizations can monitor their prices along with those of competitors.

2. Stay Ahead of The Curve.
Staying ahead of the curve now depends on having access to all of the necessary data required to respond effectively to rapidly changing supply and demand conditions. This can be done with price analytics. Market price intelligence enables pricing managers to quickly identify major market events and opportunities, and define the best price response to these. From powering a deep understanding of the relationships between price elasticity and market demand, to painting a clearer picture of competitor pricing positions, timely market intelligence makes informed price recommendations a reality.

3. Automate Data Collection.
Providing pricing managers with the facility to automatically harvest and aggregate data from all online distribution channels enables early recognition of market movements. This continuous monitoring of online market places delivers intelligence on critical pricing trends including competitor discounting, lack of product availability or even product promotions, empowering price management. Most importantly, it enables the business-critical real-time response to price changes in the market place that significantly influences revenue return potential.

4. Rise Above the Challenges of Competitive Pricing.
Price analytics now provide companies with real-time competitor price reports to help organizations refine pricing and support better product positioning in the market. Utilizing this historical data, pricing managers can correlate available data on products with competitor data to optimize pricing strategy for the business.

5. Utilize Market Intelligence to Optimize Price Management.
Structured price management depends on access to accurate, competitive information on market conditions that delivers ‘price intelligence’ at the point of price recommendation. From informing pricing policy, to enabling highly responsive decision-making based on data analysis, today’s pricing managers now have the capability to integrate competitors’ online pricing into in-house pricing processes and maximize sales and income opportunities.

“Offering customers the best pricing on hotels is a key growth factor for our business,” said Tobias Neudek, senior manager special rates & rate controlling, at hotel.de, one of Europe’s leading online hotel reservation services. “We use the Price Intelligence Suite from Lixto to monitor competitive pricing. Entering a negotiation armed with the rates our hotel partners are offering on competitive sites gives us a huge advantage, which enhances our ability to secure low rates and keep us ahead of the competition.”

About Lixto Software
Lixto Software empowers better decisions through extraction of specific and precise data from the web to drive operational performance and real-time competitive price visibility. Lixto solutions have been adopted by companies throughout the world, including Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Hama, hotel.de, Iberostar Hotels, shopping.com, SAP and ZF Friedrichshafen.

To learn more about Lixto’s real-time data analysis for driving operational performance visit www.lixto.com, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/LixtoNvalley.